Blissful Misery

Let me start by saying that things are starting to go great music wise.

Last week I had a small brain storming session on ways to make the practicing / playing / recording experience better and easier.  What I came up with was another small rearrangement of the studio.  I basically ended up turning turning the singing area around 180 degrees, and putting my pedal board where the monitors were originally. Now all I have to do is uncover my board, plugin my guitar, and flip a few switches to be ready to play for any reason.  By flipping one more switch and turning one volume knob I can add vocals in as well. I can basically be ready to do anything within 2 minutes now.  It used to take me a good 30 minutes to get everything set up and ready to go.  I’m really enjoying this a lot.

Now that it’s so easy to just pick up and play I have finally started my new practice system.  My new method basically consists of playing Blissful Misery, Black Misery, and cover songs all in one big setting using backing tracks from the computer.  I also mix everything up as much as I can to keep it more exciting. Currently the practice list is as follows: Black Misery: The Demon Within, Carnival Of Horror, Angel Incarnate; Blissful Misery: The Madness, Remembering, Dead To The World, Twilight; Covers: Nightwish: Nemo; Breaking Benjamin: So Cold, Home; Metallica: The Unforgiven, Fade To Black, Enter Sandman, Nothing Else Matters.

Now I’m going to get back to that Blissful Misery section of the list.

• The Madness is still being practiced a lot, and the vocal melodies are still in the playing around trial and error idea stage.  I do still need to work on relearning the solo, but everything else music wise sounds great.
• Remembering is another old tune that I love.  I recently had a request to play the song, and decided to add it back to the practice list.  I am going to keep the music the same for the song, but may also add a few string parts.  I have actually started writing a vocal melody for this song, and hope to have it done soon. It feels so good to play this song with the full backing track.  I can’t get enough of it.
• Dead To The World is a song I wrote years ago, but I never got around to playing it much.  It’s a fairly simple song to play guitar wise.  However as I practice it I am also changing it little by little and adding the other instruments into the song.  The song is still a work in progress, but I hope my new method of practice really helps the writing process as well.
• Twilight is currently just a guitar song, but I’ve been working on writing the bass a little along as well.  There are currently no lyrics, but there will be at some point in time.  I absolutely love the guitar for this song, even though it’s fairly hard to manage to pull off a complete full song during practice right now.  Just so every one knows this song has nothing to do with those shit movies and books.  I probably wrote the original guitar parts for this before those books were even dreamed of.

I’m planning on relearning as many songs as possible as fast as possible. This includes all of the Blissful Misery and Black Misery originals, as well as most of the covers previously played by Blissful Misery.  There truly is nothing like playing your favorite songs yourself. During this time I also plan to work on at least one unfinished or new song at all times.

Before I end this I do have one thing to say about the studio.  Currently I have decided to not worry with studio stuff at all until I have pretty much relearned a decent amount of songs.  While I don’t care to record more than one song at a time, I love learning as many as I can at once.

That’s all for now, but I should be back on here to give updates more often now that things are going so well.

I wanted to jump on here and give a small update. Lately I’ve not been able to do much work on music due to several reasons.

1. I have another damn ear infection, and can almost hear nothing in my left ear.
2. It’s been getting a lot hotter in the studio, and my body can’t deal with the heat the way it used to.
3. Due to the heat as well we’ve had a few electrical problems, and I’ve had to keep everything in the studio cut off until we can get it fixed.  I am hoping to have this resolved soon.

I will be working on some rewrites and vocal melodies as soon as I can get back in the studio.  I may just work on the stuff out side of the studio and go on and get it done, but what use is a studio if you don’t use it for everything?

In 2004 I wrote a song that was nicknamed Twilight due to the sound of the guitar riffs. To be honest all that was ever written was the guitar parts of the song. However, this song has remained probably my favorite of all my own songs over the years. The song’s riffs soothe me in a way nothing else does.

Today I transferred the guitar tracks from my old score program to the new one. I arranged it out correctly, and now I’m working on the bass track. I am hoping to finish up the bass track today, even if I don’t get to anything else.

I hope others find this song as soothing as I do when it’s released.

I’ve just finished the initial Keyboard tracks for The Madness, which makes me extremely happy. I’m not really up to taking a break right now, so I’m going to work on a little studio project dealing with the keyboards for the song. I’m mainly going to play with sounds for the tracks, but I plan to record them as well when I’m done. I’m hoping to have at least 3 layers of sound, but knowing myself I’ll probably end up with no less than 5.

I’m planning to post the recording here on our site when I’m finished as well.

I got up very early this morning, and just started playing keyboard. Right from the start I was in Madness mode. I started playing random stuff as I heard it in my head, and just messing around with the main riff from the song. From there I adapted it over to a little something different. So far I’ve done this for each section I’ve worked on, and it’s working well.

I have finished the parts for the sectional Intros as well as the Pre-Verse and Verse. Since they are played the same when repeated, I can just copy those parts directly over to the repeats later in the song.

I’ve also got a basic idea for the Pre-Chorus, which I’m working on now. I don’t want to add that much to the Pre-Chorus though as I love it the way it is. The chorus will also be an easy section to write for, but I may wait until later today to work on it. By the end of the day I do plan to have at least through the Chorus finished, but I think I can have everything except a good solo backing finished with ease. The solo may just be a couple of chords here and there to let the guitars stand out more they way they should.

Update: I’ve just all of the keyboard parts up until the Guitar solo. I’ll pick up there when I start back working later today.